These words were uttered to me by a colleague who was shortly to become a father for the second time. His tone was joking, but I could see the panic in his eyes. He desperately wanted – no, needed – me to say yes. Well, on the one hand… The practicalities are certainly easier. Whereas […]
My daughters love to play ludo, but I have learned to dread it. In Dutch, the game has the telling name: ‘Mens erger je niet’, loosely translated: ‘Man, don’t get upset’. It is certainly appropriate, because it almost always ends in a furious tantrum, sometimes with board and pieces flying across the room. One of […]
When I moved to the Netherlands to live, I was given the humorous book, “Act Normal: 99 tips for dealing with the Dutch”. One piece of advice for making conversation with a parent was to ask them how old their child was. No matter what the answer, you should respond with ‘Wat een mooie leeftijd!’ […]
Everyone knows that the first months with a new baby are hard. Lack of sleep, a demanding feeding schedule, the stress from a crying baby. Everyone knows that. Of course. But, until you’ve done it yourself, you don’t really know. The punishing schedule is the first part. A newborn baby needs feeding about every three […]
‘Rocket science’ is a synonym for ‘terribly hard, perhaps impossible’. I am emphatically not a rocket scientist. But scientific or mathematical problems have never seemed like insurmountable obstacles to me. While, on the one hand, the prospect of making a phone call fills me with panic, on the other hand an equation that needs to […]
Simply writing the title of this post causes my throat to tighten and a pricking to start behind my eyes. It is probably incomprehensible to most people. It appeared at the top of my pregnancy record when I was pregnant with my second child. ‘Gravida’ is the number of pregnancies the mother has had, including […]
Thanks firstly to my coach, who turned my life around, and without whom this blog would not exist. Then my partner, for sorting out the sys-admin side of this website, for not cracking up laughing when I mentioned the idea, but most of all for his patience and love in nearly twenty years of trying […]
Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to be good, and win approval. In my early years, this was easy – just be quiet, work hard, and do as I was told. As I grew up, it started to get more complicated. Hard work was well received by my teachers, but made me […]
There is a wonderful word in the Dutch language – ‘ervaringsdeskundige’. It means someone who has become an expert through experience. My experiences include being the shy child of a Finnish-English couple living in Wales, being the introverted British mother of two exuberant Dutch children living in Holland, losing a parent long before I became […]